After the collapse of the old regime, soldiers and sailors had removed officers who openly opposed the revolution as well as those with reputations for particular severity. Initially, they had hailed the changes in the armed forces brought about by the revolution. Among the most important of these was the formation of democratically elected army and navy committees with broad but vaguely defined administrative authority in all military units (the creation of such committees was initially sanctioned by the Petrograd Soviet in its famous Order Number One,23 issued on March 1). Enlisted personnel watched suspiciously for any sign of a return to the old order and awaited the compromise peace they felt confident would be negotiated by the Petrograd Soviet. The Provisional Government's patriotic declarations and obvious overriding concern with halting the further development of the revolution and improving Russia's military preparedness were to them understandably disturbing.24
For these reasons, by the late spring of 1917 rapidly growing numbers of Petrograd workers and soldiers and Baltic Fleet sailors viewed the Provisional Government increasingly as an organ of the propertied classes, opposed to fundamental political change and uninterested in the needs of ordinary people. On the other hand, the soviets were contrasted more and more positively with the Provisional Government and viewed as genuinely democratic institutions of popular self-rule. The divorce between the orientation of the government and the mood and aspirations of the Petrograd masses had been reflected initially on April 20 and 21, when thousands of workers, soldiers, and sailors, carrying banners emblazoned with slogans such as "Down with Miliukov!" "Down with Annexationist Politics!" and even "Down with the Provisional Government!" took to the streets to protest
Members of the new coalition cabinet formed following the April crisis: Bottom row, left to right: A. I. Konovalov, A. A. Manuilov, F. I. Rodichev, V. N. Lvov, I. V. Godnev. Middle row: A. I. Shingarev, M. I. Tereshchenko, G. E. Lvov, N. V. Nekrasov, P. N. Pereverzev. Top row: M. I. Skobelev, V. M. Chernov, A. F. Kerensky, I. G. Tsereteli, A. V. Peshekhonov.
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Miliukov's obvious intention of pursuing the war to a "victorious conclusion." Significantly, the crowds ended these demonstrations only at the request of the Petrograd Soviet, after openly ignoring government orders to disperse.25
In the wake of this April crisis, two of the ministers most closely associated with the government's unpopular foreign and military policies, Miliukov and Guchkov, left the cabinet. In this first political shake-up after the February revolution, several key moderate socialist leaders from the Petrograd Soviet were prevailed upon to accept ministerial posts. The Georgian Menshevik Iraklii Tsereteli, the passionate tribune of the Social Democratic fraction in the Second Duma before his arrest, imprisonment, and Siberian exile, and, for much of 1917, probably the single most authoritative official in the Soviet, became minister of posts and telegraph. (Tsereteli was the acknowledged head of the Menshevik-SR bloc and originator of many of its policies.) The titular head and main theoretician of the SRs, Viktor Chernov, became minister of agriculture. A close associate of Tsereteli's, Mikhail Skobelev, was named minister of labor. Aleksei Peshekhonov, founder and leader of the Popular Socialist Party, became minister of foodsupply. Pavel Pereverzev, another SR, took the post of minister of justice, while Kerensky became war and naval minister.
These personnel changes, however, did not significantly alter the government's orientation. The cabinet was now split between liberals, determined to delay fundamental reforms until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and concerned in the meantime almost exclusively with restoring governmental authority, strengthening the fighting capacity of the army, and pursuing the war to a victorious conclusion and moderate socialist Soviet leaders, anxious to respond to popular demands for immediate reform and hopeful of taking the lead in bringing about the early conclusion of the war on the basis of no annexations and no indemnities. Consequently, the first coalition, formed at the beginning of May, was potentially even less capable of marshaling an attack on national problems than its predecessor. While unable to reach a consensus on domestic matters, in the realm of foreign policy the government chose simultaneously to upgrade the combat readiness of the armed forces in preparation for a summer offensive and to encourage negotiations aimed at achieving a compromise peace.
Once they had joined the first coalition, the moderate socialists became identified in the popular mind with the shortcomings of the Provisional Government. Only the Bolsheviks, among the major Russian political groups, remained untainted by association with the government and were therefore completely free to organize opposition to it, a situation of which the party took maximum advantage.
By the eve of World War I, the Bolsheviks had achieved considerable success in weaning Petrograd factory workers away from the more moderate Mensheviks.26 Much of this gain was probably lost during the war, when thousands of experienced workers were shipped to the front and when the Bolshevik organization in Petrograd was decimated by arrests. Beginning soon after the February revolution, working through institutions such as the Bolshevik Military Organization, neighborhood party committees, district soviets, the trade union movement, factory-shop committees,27 and other nonparty mass organizations, the Bolsheviks concentrated on increasing their influence among military personnel and factory workers. In the Petrograd Soviet, at endless rounds of political rallies, and in the pages of the mass-circulation party publications Pravda, Soldatskaia pravda, and Rabotnitsa28 they trumpeted their programs and articulated what they perceived to be the most strongly felt aspirations of the masses. To the peasant-soldiers of the garrison, the Bolsheviks proclaimed: If you don't want to die at the front, if you don't want the reinstitution of tsarist discipline, if you want better living conditions and the redistribution of farmland, power must be transferred to the soviets. Of particular interest to workers, the Bolsheviks demanded tight soviet control over all phases of the economy, higher wages, an eight-hour working day, worker control in the factories, and an end to inflation. Heaping blame for unresolved problems
The Rabotnitsa editorial board. Bottom row, left to right: A. M. Kollontai, L. N. Stahl. Second row: A. I. Elizarova, V. M. Bonch-Bruevich. Third row: К. I. Nikolaeva, P. F. Kudelli, K. N. Samoilova.
upon "greedy capitalists and landlords," the Bolsheviks raised the ugly specter of counterrevolution should the soviets not assume governmental authority.
The results of these efforts were quickly apparent. In February there had been about two thousand Bolsheviks in Petrograd. At the opening of the April Conference party membership had risen to sixteen thousand. By late June it had reached thirty-two thousand, while two thousand garrison soldiers had joined the Bolshevik Military Organization and four thousand soldiers had become associated with "Club Pravda," a "nonparty" club for military personnel operated by the Military Organization.29 (The influence of the party was particularly strong in several powerful military units quartered in working-class districts of the capital and at Kronstadt, where in mid-May the local soviet passed a resolution rejecting the authority of the Provisional Government.)